Posted by: Richard Marshall | February 21, 2011

New Zealand

Auckland skyline

I realise that I’m actually two trips behind – and two very different ones at that – so an update to my travels is urgently required. Over Christmas I visited my parents’ new home in New Zealand. I was looking forward very much to a western city again after a year and a half in Asia and after a long and exhausting flight found myself in the amazingly green and pleasant city of Auckland. My parents live in an area called Kelston which though by no means the smartest suburb in the city is nevertheless tidy and clean and well-organised. I only had a night to recover from my journey, though, because the very next day we headed into the country to celebrate Christmas with friends. My folks friends live in a small town called Otorohanga. Otorohanga is a pleasant country town – its main attraction seems to be a Kiwi house were I got to see NZ’s national bird, even if only in captivity. Christmas itself was lovely – my folks friends have young children for whom the lustre of present-opening is very much undiminished, and Matt and Ian introduced me to a selection of New Zealand’s very fine beers…We stayed a couple of nights and then my parents and I headed to Rotorua.

 

Bathhouse in Rotorua

 

Rotorua is famous as an area with lots of geothermal activity. There are hot springs, geysers, and pools of boiling mud. The town and vicinity are beautiful even though the air smells strongly of sulphur. It has obviously been a popular tourist destination for a long time – one the principal buildings in the town is a huge faux – Tudor bathhouse built at the turn of the last century, which after failing to attract enough people looking to take the waters is now an interesting museum set in a charming park. The town is built on the edge of a large, sulphurous lake – some of the beaches are hot and steaming! The first day we were there we went to a park that has all sorts of thermal stuff – a geyser they chuck soap into to make it erupt, stinking, multi-coloured pools of mud and astonishing features created by all that hot smelly water. The weather was great though I was surprised by the ferocity of the NZ sun!

 

Steaming water

 

The next day we explored some of the town – we had dinner at the Pig and Whistle which will amuse my Grahamstown friends. There are some other beautiful buildings, such as the Maori church by the lake. Matt and Ian had also bought me tickets to go on the luge, which involves hurtling down a concrete track in a sort-of plastic cart. It’s really a lot of fun, though, and the cable car up to the top of the hill gave wonderful views of the town. We drove back to Auckland by way of the Coromandel peninsular which though beautiful was the only day in my two weeks which was rained out.

 

Maori church

The Pig and Whistle

 

I spent most of my remaining time in and around Auckland. My friends Dan and Tess were in NZ as well, and it was wonderful catching up with them. We spent New Year at Dan’s mom’s place just north of the city, which was a great party and I had the peculiar satisfaction of welcoming in the New Year 18 hours before some of my American friends! I must have been nursing my hangover before they had started drinking! Dan and Tess also spent an afternoon in the city with me – we went up sky tower and stood on the glass floors two hundred meters above the city, which is a very unnerving sensation. None of us had the guts to try jumping off the damn thing attached to cables, especially after a slightly beery lunch! My folks took me to the museum, which is housed in an imposing building and has some interesting Maori and Polynesian displays. We also went to some of Auckland’s gorgeous parks – green space is something I desperately miss in HCMC and Auckland has it in abundance.

Auckland Museum

Auckland Museum

 

Glass floor at Skytower

 

We took a couple of trips just outside of the city. There are a range of hills west of the city called the Waitakeres which have beautiful views and black sand beaches. We also took a trip to an island called Tiritiri Matangi to see some of New Zealand’s native birds. Many of these birds are extinct on the mainland but survive on a few islands free from possums, cats, rats etc. We were very lucky and saw some very scarce species. It was also a perfect day and the island itself is beautiful.

I really liked Auckland. My parents seem to settling in as well as can be expected – my mom has now started teaching. It’s a city I look forward to visiting again, and maybe even living in one day. But for now I’m back in Vietnam, in a nice new apartment with Ted, going to an upmarket gym and generally looking forward to 2011…

 

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | September 27, 2010

Southern Thailand: Koh Phi Phi and Railey

Southern Thailand

Well, this is my final day in Thailand and I’m sitting at the most useless computer at the hostel so let’s hope this post sees the light of day…

After Chiang Mai I took a plane to Phuket. My flight was pretty late so I  had to spend the night there and not really knowing anything about the island I stayed overnight at Patong beach. I only spent a morning wandering around the place but it was there where I was most struck by how sleazy Thailand can be. In the north most of the other foreigners I encountered were young people like myself (no doubt I wasn’t visiting the right places) and at Phi Phi and Railey they were mostly backpackers or young couples and families. Here, in my brief observation, the demographic was quite notably fat, sweating middle-aged men with little Thai girls hanging off their meaty paws. I encountered one such on the long (it seemed endless) bus trip to the pier. He was a German, stout and perspiring in shorts and a Panama hat. He tried to engage me in conversation but I replied to him with my normal pace, volume and accent so of course he couldn’t understand a word I said. Instead, he turned his attention to an Aussie surfer, also with little Thai girlfriend in tow. After discussing the merits of various countries as tourist destinations (South Africa is too dangerous and they all try to rip you off if you “look like a tourist”) and where to buy gems and gold (not Turkey apparently, as the Turks are “zo tricky”) the German began to reminisce about his previous trips to Phuket: “Last year I haff a girlfriend. My luff for her vas not zo zat I vanted to marry her – ho ho – but I sink she could not haff afforded a holiday like zat so she vas very greatful…”. I was happy to leave Phuket.

Phi Phi

 The trip across to Phi Phi was very beautiful and so too is the island itself, though initially I was a bit underwhelmed. The town is very touristy, which I don’t really mind but but it can get a bit monotonous. Also, it’s a small island and clearly struggling desparately to cope with rapidly growing human impact. Garbage, water, sewage and power were all obviously problematic. It was, in a word, a bit dirty. The sea, at least near the town, was also a bit disappointing being, as it was, shallow, tepid and slightly smelly. On my last day, though, I took a boat trip round the islands and I began to understand why people rave about the Andaman. The day began inauspiciously enough with a stop to feed monkeys at a nearby bay, thus adding to the environmentally harmful practices I’ve been party to on this trip.  Next stop was Maya Bay on Phi Phi’s “uninhabited” neighbour. This was apparently where The Beach was filmed though with the lines of motorboats churning up to a palm-fringed beach, offloading crowds of people and then churning out again it reminded me more of a scene from The Pacific. After that though we went snorkelling which even though pretty contrived – they chuck out bread for the fish which swirl up enthuastically – was really lots of fun. It was great to be in slightly deeper water and to see fish in the sea which I’ve previously only seen in dentists’ waiting rooms. We also went to some of the further islands which really lived up to the classic images of Thailand – great expanses of white sand with the turquoise and acquamarine ocean stretching away beyond…

Railey

After Phi Phi I headed to Railey beach on the peninsular. I really liked Railey – there are half a dozen relatively expensive resorts which nevertheless have been as tastefully designed as one could expect, as well as a pretty relaxed backpacker scene – bars playing (endless and ubiquitous) Bob Marley rather than gargantuan full moon parties. But above all it was really beautiful. The landscape is a pretty dramatic one of limestone karsts similar to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. The beaches are white and much cleaner than Phi Phi and the swimming is better. I also had some pleasant company for the first few days having met a very nice Swiss girl on the boat. In Phi Phi half the people I’d probably have preferred to avoid!  So all in all I was happy to hang around there for a few days. I probably should have tried to check out Koh Lanta but I’ve spent a lot of time in transit – and not a single bus, train, plane or boat has left on time so far! – so I decided to leave that for another day. I’m ready to head back to Vietnam but I’m also planning my next trip in the back of my mind… After all, this has been the first major trip I’ve done on my own and although Thailand, especially the places I went, is pretty easy, and though I didn’t get everything right, I feel emboldened to set off on a more ambitious journey as soon as I can. I just have to work for another year first!

Railey Beach

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | September 19, 2010

Northern Thailand

Hills near Doi Inthanon

I’m sitting sweating in the beach-bum paradise of Koh Phi Phi and had better write up my trip to the north before I forget what misty mountains and dark, dripping forests are like!

I took the train from Hua Lamphong station in Bangkok. After the newness of the skytrain and the metro I was quite taken with the Asian dirtiness and shabbiness of the station. It was built in 1916 and has a great vaulting ceiling and plenty of wrought iron and stained glass. Within are masses of people and stalls selling fried food and the worst cup of coffee I’ve had in Thailand. It’s a pity all the smoke was diesel fumes rather than billowing steam but I guess you can’t have everything…The train was perfectly comfortable and although about three hours late arrived in Chiang Mai safely enough. I spent my first afternoon wandering around the city. It has the remains of some old city walls and a moat which make for a pretty town. Inside the old city seemed to be temple after tourist trap after temple which made me wonder if anyone there actually lives in the real world.  The temples are very attractive, though, and some offered shaded precincts which were very welcome on a surprisingly boiling afternoon. Some are also pretty old – Chiang Mai was actually independent of the rest of Thailand until the 19th century – and the weathered brick  stupas were mostly more evocative than the newer gilded ones.

Wat Chedi Luang

I ended up booking a trek through my guesthouse which caused me some anxiety since it seemed to involve everything I’d hoped to avoid – bamboo rafts, hill tribes, elephants – and to be run by what I would have called a pretty second-rate looking crowd if I’d seen evidence of anything better. Certainly my three days in the hills were ridiculously physically undemanding – I can just picture Derek champing at the bit – though I’m not exactly in great shape after my year in HCMC. Fortunately it was saved by two things. The forests up there are extremely beautiful – faffing in that kind of environment is fine by me. Also, leaving late and arriving early everyday did give me the chance to try my luck at birdwatching. I saw next to nothing – it’s not a good time of the year and I saw some hill tribe people with massive homemade firearms so maybe the birds know better than to advertise their presence. (One of the guides looked at my bird book and started telling me the name for some or other pheasant. The word was exactly the same for any pheasant, franklin, monal, fireback etc which made me suspect it was a culinary rather than ornithological term). Also, the people on the trek were great. On the first day there were two very pleasant English girls and an affable Japanese guy who managed to be friendly knowing barely any English at all. On the second they didn’t really know what to with me since most people only hike overnight, but the other person to have booked three days was a French ski-instructer who was a genuine outdoors man and good company. The bamboo rafting was pleasant enough but the elephant business is rather tired. The elephants are taken on a route which has steep ascents and descents, the latter of which would send you tumbling out of the howdah if you didn’t hang on for dear life. (This fate befell my sunglasses which fell into a puddle which the elephant then trod in. They aren’t what they used to be).It also seemed a bit cruel, and in fact I now believe that there are NGOs trying to regulate and mitigate how these tourist elephants are treated. Nobody I spoke to actually liked riding elephants.

I had one more day in Chiang Mai which I spent mostly buying books. In the afternoon I hired a motorbike and drove up Doi Suthep, a mountain just out of town with, inevitably, a temple at the top. The ride up into the cool, forested hills was refreshing and the temple, though crowded, was magnificent. The drive also gave great views of the city.

Chiang Mai

The birding was so frustrating I decided to try my luck at a nearby mountain – Doi Chiang Dao – recommended by a birding website. This is not the time to be looking for birds. The two special species to be found on this mountain (Giant Nuthatch and Mrs Hume’s Pheasant, Dad) can only been seen at 1400m by a track which is impassable in the wet season. So I ended up in the forest at the base of the mountain. It was almost always misty and rained a lot. It was very beautiful and very quiet – too quite really. There are two places to stay and for most of the time I was the only person in either. When some company did arrive it was in the form of a middle-aged, Belgian lady cyclist (she was cycling around to raise money for the ill-treated elephants at Chiang Mai) whose conversation – in a ludicrous mitteleuropa accent – was pretty tiresome. Chiang Dao also ended up being another place where I spent more on dinner than I did on my night’s repose. The food at my guesthouse was fantastic – there are organic farms in the area and the owner’s  Thai dishes were simple, fresh and crisp. Being the only person staying there, however, I sometimes felt like a guest of the family rather than a paying customer so one night I went next door, which advertised Western food. I had imagined a burger or spaghetti bolognaise, but ended up with pork tenderloin with roasted shallot gravy, crispy bacon and crushed new potatoes, followed by chocolate cake with mango syrup or some such thing. This all came to 670 TB which those of you who know Thailand will appreciate  is absurd. The final day there I went to a quite impressive limestone cave. Although I saw a few birds I was ready to leave, and after straightforward but time-consuming travel I got to the warm south…

Chiang Dao

Monastery at Doi Chiang Dao

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | September 7, 2010

Bangkok

Bangkok

After some long and exhausting months in HCMC I have finally made my escape. I have now been over a year in Asia and am taking a break between the completion of my first contract and the beginning of my second. I decided to spend my month off in Thailand and headed to Bangkok.

I like Bangkok. I really like being in a major city again, with an exciting buzz  in the air. Being here makes me realise just how provincial HCMC really is. I was impressed coming out of the airport by the big winding freeway which might have been in Joburg. The area I’m staying in, Silom, has a gritty urban atmosphere with wide roads, huge buildings and lots of concrete. I’m also just down the road from Bangkok’s elevated railway, the Sky Train, which is almost worth a trip to Bangkok for on its own. The hostel is very pleasant – thanks Ted – and I found myself much better able to adapt to dorm living than I imagined.

On the first day I went, as recommended, by sky train to the river, from where I took a boat towards Bangkok’s historic centre, Ko Rattanakosin. I got off the boat at the pier nearest Wat Pho, which contains the world’s largest reclining Buddha, or so I am told. The Buddha is indeed, well, large. I really liked the walls of the temple, though, which depict scenes of Thai life and mythology (the walls at Wat Pra Kaeo are similarly decorated). I generally try to avoid taking photos in religious buildings, especially when they are so tremendously elaborate as to defy the capacities of my camera, but there was one picture I couldn’t resist at Wat Pho. Amid scenes of great doings sacred and profane, monks seeking the path to Enlightenment, kings being borne in splendor through their palaces, enraged elephants being driven away by villagers, men and gods locked in battle celestial and terrestrial, the cat chasing a mouse in the corner was irresistibly charming. I also thought how much Christine would have loved this picture! (I’ll try edit it so it’s clearer when I get back to Vietnam).

Cat and Mouse

Wat Pho

After Wat Po I took a bit of a detour on a Tuk Tuk to a large temple called the Golden Mount, which offers great views of the city. I was a bit worried about the Tuk Tuk but he didn’t rip me off in the end. He did try to take me to some tailor or other but I think it was pretty clear that I wasn’t in the market for a suit. The main disadvantage was that the roof was too low so I couldn’t  see the city as easily as I would have liked. By the time I got back to the river the palace and the museum were both about to close so instead I crossed the river to see another temple, Wat Arun, which was apparently built on the site of king Tak Sin’s arrival when he established Bangkok as the new capital in the late 18th century.

Golden Mount

Wat Arun

The next day I got up earlier and headed back to Ko Rattanakosin. I made my way to the royal palace (once again suitably dressed in trousers), which was fascinating. There was obviously a lot of development there in the 19th century, so the complex is a bizarre mix of Thai and European architectural styles. The main palace, indeed, looks like a French chateau on the bottom two storeys with the roof of a Thai Wat. After that I headed down the museum which was also very interesting. The Thai’s battles with the Burmese seem almost as interminable as the Vietnamese wars with the Chinese. The museum was strongly patriotic (it mentioned a war with Vietnam in the early 19th century which the History Museum in HCMC insists the Vietnamese won while the museum here claims ended when Vietnam “sued for peace”!). All the same, the Thai’s achievements are impressive. When Bangkok was established as the capital, the country was half occupied by Burma and breaking up into rival fiefdoms. Tak Sin and his successors managed to re-establish the country, fend off the depredations of British and French colonialism and modernise the country so effectively it remains the most developed in the region by quite a way. That’s pretty good going.

Grand Palace

That afternoon I decided to visit a large park in the north of city. It was really crowded on a Sunday afternoon and basically just a lawn dotted with trees, so my binos seemed a bit superfluous, but I did see my first Thai new species, a black, cuckoo-like bird called an Asian Koel. In the evening I decided to at least take a look at Patpong, the red light district just a few blocks down from the hostel. I didn’t really go in ideal circumstances – I was tired, alone, sober and had just eaten an Isan beef salad which I thought would melt my face off. But Ted had suggested a bar where I could just sit and watch the world go by. I didn’t find the bar in the end, but landed up in an alley with people trying to sell me fake rolexes on one side and lure me into buildings emblazoned in neon with signs like “Pink Panther Go-Go bar” and “Pussy Collection” on the other. Needless to say I didn’t like it and beat a fairly hasty retreat. I was a bit annoyed with myself for not even considering going to watch a woman expel ping-pong balls from her vagina – perhaps that makes me a bit unworldly –  but really, to sit there alone and in the dark to see that kind of thing could only have been profoundly depressing.

The next day I decided to see a bit of modern Bangkok. I went to Starbucks for breakfast and then headed to a gigantic mall called Siam Square. The mall made Parksons look like a corner shop.There was an excellent bookshop where to my great satisfaction I found an accessible, single-volume history of Thailand, which hopefully will make all those wars and states and kings I’d never heard of at the museum a little less opaque. I also went to see a movie in a very comfortable cinema. The movie, “Machete”, was dire, but I did enjoy everyone solemnly standing up for the national anthem before an obscene gore-fest. While the anthem was playing there were various mawkish images of the king doing – well, I wasn’t exactly sure what. In one he was mopping sweat from his brow, demonstrating that even so august a personage as himself is as vulnerable to the humidity as more humble folk. I then went up to Bangkok’s tallest building and enjoyed a beer on the 83rd floor while the sun set over the city.

Bangkok Skyline

This evening I take the night train to Chiang Mai.

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | July 15, 2010

Family Holiday part 2: Ha Long Bay and Cambodia

Cat Ba Island

After what seems a long absence I’ve decided that I need to return to blogging. I’ve certainly learned the importance of updating more quickly. Although the last week of my parents’ April visit was only a few months ago, recent events have made it seem as if I’m looking back across a great rift of time into a dimly remembered past.  But the historian in me baulks at the thought of a gap in the records, even in as personal and insignificant an archive of experience as this one. Also, it we had good time together and so it is worthy of being remembered and valued.

After we returned from Cat Tien we took a flight to Hai Phong in the north. I was quite pleasantly surprised by Hai Phong. After the appalling heat down south the town was cool, leafy and had a pleasant colonial centre. We didn’t linger long, however. We took a fairly uncomfortable bus down the harbour, and then a boat to Cat Ba island. We had heard the town of Cat Ba disparaged by various people, but for all the kitsch hotels and karaoke bars it was certainly no worse than anywhere else in Vietnam, and actually had quite a pleasant sea-front. A far greater threat to the beauty of the island seemed to be an enormous marina they were building, rather than the usual Vietnamese muddle. Fortunately, much of the interior of the park is protected, and we spent our day there doing an actually quite arduous walk through the forest. We also enjoyed some very pleasant seafood dinners by the harbour.

Mom and Dad fresh before the walk.

Rather less so later on…

From Cat Ba we took a boat to Ha Long City, where we were to catch a junk to go around the bay. There was a certain amount of confusion and rigmarole as to which boat exactly we were supposed to be on, and we ended up on a different boat each night, but in the end it was all very pleasant. The food was great, we had some chatty Australian company, and the bay is indeed very beautiful. It would probably be better without an armada of kitsch tourist boats and a dense, dirty population of fish farmers, but even this wasn’t sufficient to mar the magnificence of the limestone karsts rising out of the sea.

Ha Long Bay

The bay

After Ha Long, we returned to Hai Phong for a night and then flew back to HCMC. We left immediately to go to Siem Reap. I had been to the temples quite recently, but enjoyed travelling in a tuk tuk rather than by bike, and it was nice to be already familiar with the place. The second day we decided to go birding on lake Tonle Sap. Unfortunately it was the dry season so the lake was only a fraction of the size it reaches during the rains. It was also unbelievably hot. All the same, it was interesting to see the life on the lake, and we did also manage to see quite a few new birds, including a large mob of pelicans.

Me in a boat

For mom and dad’s final night in HCMC we had a hot-pot dinner, which was really delicious, and I returned to work after seeing them off at the airport.

P.S. I have managed to upload a lot of photos onto my picasa site – please click onto the gallery if you would like to see them. Some of them go back a few years and may contain images of friends/ family in different stages of inebriation. If anyone seriously objects let me know and I’ll remove them!

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | May 18, 2010

Family Holiday Part 1: HCMC and Cat Tien National Park

Binh Thay

Binh Thay Market

After a few months of neglect I guess it’s time for another update! My parents came to Vietnam for a visit in April so I’ve actually been pretty busy. The first few days after they arrived we wandered around HCMC looking at all the, to me, quite familiar sights of District 1. It was incredibly hot and I’ve become really unused to walking around the city since I got my bike so I was surprised how tiring it was, but it was interesting to see the city through newcomer’s eyes again. The new thing we managed to do in the city was head down to District 5 where I had never been. Back in the colonial period the place was known as Cholon and was mostly inhabited by Chinese. Although the tourist brochures insist the place retains some kind of Chinese identity today it looked pretty much the same as the rest of the city to me. No doubt I should explore it more thoroughly but the heat and chaos and generally uninviting surface appearance are as always a bit intimidating. Binh Thay market was very interesting, though. It’s housed in an impressive colonial building and is less of a tourist trap than Ben Thanh. It was also full of bizarre merchandise for my parents to take a look at. We also visited a pagoda which claimed to be two hundred years old and quite possibly was. It was a bit garish and hot and smelly as most Vietnamese pagodas are but certainly did have a certain charm. Otherwise we managed to eat plenty of good food and drink plenty of Vietnamese beer. We had a very pleasant evening with my colleagues and I even took the folks to the scummy bar I frequent in the backpacker district!

Pagoda D5

After a few days in HCMC we headed up to Cat Tien National Park. We got a sort of tour company to take us which meant that transport was easy – if we hadn’t taken a car we’d have needed to go by bus and then motorbike which would have been a real pain. From what I’d read of the park I’d imagined it to be on the point of collapse, but that certainly didn’t seem to be the case when we got there. There’s a good infrastructure of accommodation around the main camp, good roads, and we went birding with a very knowledgeable guide. The park was very dry and very hot but also really beautiful – it’s always such a revelation to find the great outdoors in Vietnam! We did a lot of birding and saw a number of really exciting new species. I got a glimpse of a wild peacock and a good look at the wild ancestor of the chicken. We also saw a good selection of barbets, broadbills, woodpeckers etc. There’s not a great deal of animal life in the park except in it’s deepest recesses, but we did also see a couple of Sambur deer and a group of huge wild cattle called Gaurs. The cottages were comfy and the food was fine and it’s definitely a park I’d recommend to anyone travelling around Southern Vietnam. We then went back to HCMC for a night before heading north, but I’d write that up in the next post.

Cat Tien

Impressive Tree

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | March 8, 2010

Siem Reap and Angkor

Angkor Wat

It’s been a few weeks since my Cambodia trip so I guess an update is due. I was pretty exhausted when I got back and then had to launch immediately into a weekend of teaching, so writing the trip up slid down the list of priorities as my time began to blur back into its usual routine.

Getting to Siem Reap from HCMC was easy enough. The bus trip was long and tiresome, the border was a bit chaotic, especially on the Vietnamese side (though incomparably better than any African border I have been through), but I was pretty fresh at that stage and coped well enough. The landscape in Cambodia was very attractive, and much closer to the South East Asia I had imagined before I got here than anywhere I’ve seen so far in Vietnam. It’s mostly as flat as billiard table, a patch work of paddy fields with clumps of Washingtonia palms and the occasional village raised on stilts. It’s certainly poorer than Vietnam, but it also seemed a lot less crowded and claustrophobic. The town of Siem Reap came as a real surprise. The town is a few kilometres away from the temples at Angkor, and is teeming with tourists who are pouring money into the place. There’s lots of development going, but it doesn’t seem to be the kind of unchecked, unregulated free-for-all I’ve been seeing in Vietnam. The colonial town centre has been mostly preserved, and the majority of the newer buildings have been designed to harmonize with the older ones. Some of the streets in the centre of town are closed to traffic at night, or even entirely pedestrianised. As a result, instead of the Vietnamese shambles of ugly hotels, filthy streets, broken pavements and lawless motorbike traffic, central Siem Reap has long, shady arcades with pleasant restaurants and cafes spilling out into the street. They also have shady trees, benches and a walkway along the river, which is again in contrast to the slimy, polluted, stinking waterways of HCMC. That said, the scars of Cambodia’s brutal past and present poverty are still in evidence. There are plenty of beggars with appalling disfigurements and diseases, and they form an uncomfortable contrast to the foreigners eating well and getting drunk in the cafes. Also, there are far fewer locals in the restaurants than one would find in HCMC with it’s growing middle class. But all the same, the town of Siem Reap really deserves commendation.

My Hotel

Old buildings, Siem Reap

I decided to get to the temples by bicycle. With my not terribly healthy lifestyle in HCMC I thought I could use the exercise, and I didn’t feel like getting ripped off by local motorbike or tuk-tuk drivers. Cycling around the temples is very pleasant. It’s a very large complex – on one of the days I rode about 30 km – and is either through forest or, in some places, paddies. I had great independence and mobility. There were certain disadvantages, though. I hired bikes from my hotel which weren’t great at all. The absence of gears or shocks wasn’t such a big problem in such a flat environment, but on the last day I ended up with a bike which simply wasn’t big enough, and a day on that thing left me feeling sore. The other problem was that it was hot -really, really hot. The weather, and in some ways the environment generally, reminded me of the Zambezi Valley – hot, dry, muggy and dusty. I was pouring sweat the whole time, and by the time I’d done three days on the bike I actually felt very unwell – it took me several days before I didn’t feel exhausted and have a chronic headache.

The Bike

The temples themselves were, of course, incredible. Angkor Wat is the most famous, and probably the most impressive, of them, but is only one of a complex which covers a really large area. Just north of Angkor Wat is Angkor Thom, which contains some of the other famous temples – Bayon, Baphoun etc – and is surrounded by a really impressive wall. There are then dozens of “smaller” structures, some of which would be considered absolute marvels if they weren’t overshadowed by the bigger buildings.  Some of these smaller temples, such as Preah Khan, ended up being my favorites, since it was possible to get away from everyone else and even find oneself alone, which obviously was more atmospheric than the teeming Angkor Wat or Bayon.

Preah Khan

Angkor Wat

Bayon, Angkor Thom

One of the smaller temples

Other than wander around the temples, I also managed to get some fairly good birding in. Being on the bicycle I was reluctant to travel in the dark, so I wasn’t able to birdwatch at ideal times of the day, but even in the heat I didn’t do too badly. In Siem Reap I spent money like water, shopping at the market, drinking G ‘n’ Ts and eating well, and generally having a good time. The bus trip back was dreadful, particularly as I was still feeling unwell, but it was overall a tremendous experience.

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Posted by: Richard Marshall | January 18, 2010

Dalat

View of Dalat

After four months in the chaos and dirt of Ho Chi Minh City I’ve finally taken a vacation. I decided to head up to Dalat in the Central Highlands.  The landscape towards Dalat was surprisingly reminiscent of Africa. This was partly a result of the crowded, dirty road out of HCMC lined with endless shabby villages, but even more striking was the colours of the countryside. I’d always imagined that all of Vietnam was hot, steamy and green, but this is the dry season and the country is all browns and reds – dry grass along the road side and red earth in the unsown fields. As we approached the highlands themselves the country became more forested, though the foothills have been severely logged. The road wound up a steep pass which was quite inaccessible so there is some remaining forest there. Dalat itself is surrounded by huge pine forests. I haven’t quite been able to figure out whether the pines are indigenous or introduced, though I’m pretty sure the French are responsible. It’s quite hard to find old photos of the town, but the few I have seen show the nearby peaks to be grassland, which I guess has now been invaded by pines. It’s possible that the previous inhabitants deforested the place but they did a hell of a job if that’s the case. There is still some remaining indigenous forest in some of the valleys so the place is very similar to Nyanga or parts of the Amatolas – grass and pines on the higher ground and forest along the streams.

The town itself, like so much of Vietnam, is absolutely booming. Most of the hotels seem to be new and there are many being built. Some of the hoardings around building sites suggest that there are even plans to build a fancy mall with glass and steel high rises. That would be a real shame since despite the development Dalat still retains a lot of the charm of a peaceful mountain escape. The streets are relatively quiet, the scent of pines is strong enough to mask the motorcycle fumes and the air is cool and refreshing. There are also still many French buildings left. The heyday of the town seems to have been the 1920s and 30s and many of the buildings – the railway station, the cathedral and some of the large hotels – have a distinct feeling of dressing for dinner and puffing away through cigarette holders. For the Vietnamese, the town is the ultimate romantic destination, so the place is full of cosy little hotels, horse carriages covered with flowers, gigantic topiary hearts, swan-shaped pedalos on the lake…

Train Station

Cathedral

The night I arrived I went down to a restaurant right next Ho Xuan Huong lake and savoured a beer while shivering in the cold wind off the water. The next day I headed up to the Dalat flower garden, which is really very attractive despite the inevitable kitsch topiary, statues, fibreglass dustbins shaped like animals etc that the Vietnamese are so fond of. After that, I took a look at the railway station and then decided to rent a motorbike and try and find a certain waterfall. In the end I took a wrong turn and landed up at some lakes but the sheer pleasure of riding a motorbike on a quiet country road under the pines, stopping every now and again to admire the view and enjoy the silence, made the destination irrelevant. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to drive for recreation.

Flower Garden

The Bike

On Tuesday I went on a mountain bike trip, which was a lot of fun though it certainly showed me how unfit I’ve become living in HCMC. In the afternoon I visited the “crazy house”, which is a really wierd house/ hotel being erected by a Russian-trained Vietnamese architect. The place is supposedly reminiscent of Gaudi (if I ever get to Barcelona I’ll let you know) and full of narrow winding staircases and pokey rooms themed around animals such as bears or kangaroos. I tried to imagine the place lit up at night and being like some kind of magical fairy tale, but I’m pretty sure that sleeping there would leave me tense and paranoid. Nearby is Bao Dai’s summer palace. I’ve always felt bad for Bao Dai. Although he became a corrupt, dissipated fellow the French set him up for a pretty impossible task as the last puppet emperor of Vietnam. His palace confirmed this impression. It’s little more than a villa, build in the style of Highlands junior school in Harare and full of shabby, dowdy fifties furniture – the interior is how I image a hotel in Gwelo or Umtali  might have looked in 1950.

Crazy House

Bao Dai’s Summer Palace

For the next two days I went hiking, which I found physically much less demanding and went through some really beautiful country. The second day took us through some indigenous forest and I managed to do some good birding. The company was pleasant too – the guides were friendly and Lydia and Irene from Singapore were a lot of fun. The campsite was freezing but comfortable, and I saw the stars for what must be the first time in Vietnam. It was really reassuring to find so much countryside so close to HCMC – I had always imagined that all of Asia must be teeming, but there are obviously a few open spaces left.

Tuyen Lam Lake

On the final day I visited the Lam Dong museum which had little of interest but was housed in a beautiful French mansion. Afterwards I went the one crossroad which still feels really French. I sat on the terrace of the Cafe de la poste and drank an espresso, looking out on the Hotel du parc, the cathedral, and the Eiffel Tower-shaped radio mast that the French for some reason erected in the middle of Indochina. I just wished I smoked and hadn’t shaved that morning to complete my notion of Gallic comfort (excuse the stereotype, of course!). After that I took the cable car to Tuyen Truc pagoda next to Tuyen Lam lake. The cable car is three kilometres long and though I was reassured by the signs saying “Doppelmayr Technologies, Wolfsdorf, Austria” being suspended in a small box above the pines in Vietnam was slightly nervy. The pagoda was new and dull as most pagodas seem to be in this country. In the arfternoon I went to the Cafe Tung, which the trusty Lonely Planet claims to have been a hangout for Saigonese intellectuals in the 1950s. It’s been deliberately kept that way, and the dim lighting and leather chairs actually made for a very cogenial little cafe. The idea of Vietnamese intellectuals seemed slightly fantastic to me, but sure enough there were leather jackets, trenchcoats, wild hair and nerdy glasses all in evidence.

Museum

Cafe de la poste

I spent long enough in Dalat to be happy to return home. The bus trip back was a bit of a nightmare – Vietnamese comedy gags on the TV screen, some idiotic pom playing his ipod too loud in the seat behind me, the bus driver talking on his cell phone while overtaking on moutain roads, stopping in horrible provincial bus stops and on the side of the road to pick up yokels who couldn’t decide whether they were coming or going – but after 304km and eight hours I was back safe and sound.

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Posted in Dalat, Vietnam

Posted by: Richard Marshall | December 1, 2009

Settling in…

Yesterday, I lost the ticket for the downstairs motorbike parking. They did eventually let me out, but the incident made me realise that I really need to do something about paperwork. The problem is, I don’t have any. As of yesterday evening, I had no work permit, no police clearance, no Celta certificate, no driver’s licence, no motorbike papers, no parking permit, no health insurance card. I didn’t even have my passport which was with ila, though that has now been returned. I should get my health insurance tomorrow, but the rest of those documents will take weeks to arrive. I’m living in legal limbo…

Having said that, I am beginning to settle in to Saigon life. The major step forward I took this weekend was to start riding my motorbike around town. I had done a little practice in one the wealthy, leafy suburbs which fringe the teeming city proper, but hadn’t had the courage to plunge into the chaos of the downtown traffic. But I realised that I needed to bite the bullet, and discovered a couple of surprising things. One is that I really, really enjoy riding a motorbike. I had imagined that I’d be always in terror of falling off at high speed, but for one thing it’s no more likely to fall off a motorbike than a bicycle, and also at an average speed of about 25kmh, I probably wouldn’t actually die even if I did. Seriously, the absolute maximum speed I’ve managed on a quiet, good road at 6:30 am is 40kmh – motorbike riding in Saigon is a slow business. The other thing that surprised me is that I feel more secure on a bike than I do on foot. The traffic mostly flows ok, and if you keep an eye on the aggressive jerks in taxis and the tottering school children on bicycles you’ll probably be ok.

I’m also settling in nicely to my new house. I finally got round to taking some photos, so here they are…

Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street

The entrance to our alley

The Alley

It’s really difficult to get the whole house, so this is the best I can do – it’s the one with the orange balcony.

The entrance/ living area – and my bike!

My room

3 Comments

Posted in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Posted by: Richard Marshall | November 9, 2009

Halloween at ila and other ghastly experiences…

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m back in the office after another exhausting weekend at ila. I’ve planned my lessons for this evening and simply can’t bear to turn my attention to next weekend’s lessons as I probably should be doing, so instead I’ll update this blog with has been rather neglected of late. Teaching seems to be going fine – some days go better than others, of course, but I’m more or less beginning to find it easier, sometimes even enjoy myself, and in my most optimistic moods even come close to believing that I might actually have taught someone something useful or valuable.  But let’s not get too carried away…

The normal routine of ila life, such as it is, was disrupted last week by halloween festivities.The older students were required to design on paper and then execute a carved pumpkin. Eighteen students around an A3 piece of paper was a pretty worthless exercise, but somehow one of my classes produced a good enough design to be rewarded with an actual pumpkin, which lurked in my class until my poor teaching assistant took the thing home an hacked a few bits off the outside. The great attraction of the weekend, though, was the haunted house – two classrooms filled with creepy stuffed monsters and wierd halloween skeletons etc. The lights were turned out and halloween noises blared from a CD player. Into this room my junior and senior classes were pushed howling and screaming, while more sweaty hands than I thought possible fastened themselves to my arms, trousers, shirt and tie. And just in case our own thousand children weren’t able to generate enough hysteria, kids from another branch came to visit, so the place was an absolute shambles. The juniors also had a costume competition, and I also made what I thought was a rather lame effort but which proved to be absloutely terrifying to the kids:

Juniors 3A

Juniors 3A

Juniors 3B

Juniors 3B

Seniors 2

Seniors 2

Seniors 3

I have two other classes during the week, an older teenager class and some adults. My adults are mostly a young lot and so that they could have the opportunity to speak some English in a social setting they arranged a party for the class which took place last night. We went to a seafood place which was in fact very nice. I’m becoming more and more reconciled to eating prawns with the shells still on. In fact the shell isn’t bad when crisped up on a braai. Snails and other wierd moluscs also hold fewer terrors for me – I’m actually starting to rather enjoy them them. The Vietnamese are fond of down-downs, but fortunately they put large blocks of ice in beer so there’s never much in a glass. (Yes, that’s right, ice in beer – gasp, Southern Africa. But in this climate it’s really pleasant, keeps you sober longer and makes hang-overs much less brutal). We then all set off for Nnice Karaoke, where to my horror I found myself singing “Hey Jude” in front of my class. They all absolutely love karaoke of course and sang endless cheesy Vietnamese songs and a few cheesy English ones (“I Can Show You the World”). The whole thing was just so bizarre – and of course I ended up really enjoying myself!

5 Comments

Posted in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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